Exaudi – Sunday 21 May A✠D 2023
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 27:7a, 8, 9a;27:1, 11a, 12;47:8;St. John 14:18a, 28b, 16:22b
✠ Lection: Ezekiel 36:23a, 23c-28;1 Peter 4:7b-11;St. John 15:26—16:4a
Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I hope that the joy of the Lord has been with you in this glorious Eastertide that has been full of renewed celebration, singing, praying, and rejoicing as you’ve been constantly reminded that and how the Lord God is your strength and your song, and He has become your salvation. To draw this season to a close and prepare you for the coming of Pentecost and the lengthy days of the time of Trinity, I proclaim to you the Word of the Lord today that you will be persecuted. It is a given. You live in a world that is fallen, saturated in sin and its desires. Knowing the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit will therefore guarantee that you are persecuted because the world rejects God as Father; it rejects Christ as its Redeemer; and it rejects the Holy Spirit not only as its Judge, but also even as its Comforter, its Helper, its own righteous and Holy Advocate. Therefore, if you are of God, you are not of the world and the world will gladly act against you accordingly.
For the Apostles, we hear Jesus this morning warn them of two specific forms of persecution which they would endure. They would be put out of the synagogues, the very places where those who feared God could gather to hear the Word proclaimed and to offer their prayers. And they would be killed by those who thought that by doing so that they were offering God service. So, first, understand the word persecution. We tend to think that the persecution of the Christian Church only happens in periods in which hordes of blood-thirsty Muslims make us kneel in a group before gleefully separating our heads from our bodies to appease their false god, or when the early Church was gathered and thrown into the arena to be attacked and devoured by hungry lions all as spectacle to the heathen crowds gathered to ogle and slobber over their favorite entertainment. We should ask ourselves how far have we digressed in our progress over the centuries. It’s far worse than many of us think. Yes, those were true, clear instances of persecution because the perpetrators sought not to have civilized debate over points of contention, but to simply shut up those who disagreed or opposed them. Which is how you can see persecution can exist without blood-soaked arenas or jihadists dragging us out to the roadside with shouts and sharp blades.
The persecution today’s Christian is likely to face, especially in the first-world West that exists heavily because of and as Christian society and accomplishment, we are still too early in the perverted clown world age for us yet to be corralled into the wild animals’ pits or regularly to be mass-murdered by Mohammedans. The persecution that you’re likely to experience is much more sly and subversive. It’s rather soft in comparison to yesteryear. To persecute someone is to pursue them by one of many means, be it legally, socially, emotionally, or physically, to see to it that they are brought to harm by those means for that of which the persecutor disagrees. This means that the Helper, Who has come to you, to dwell within you, to guide you into all truth about Jesus and Who He is as the world’s Redeemer, that blessed Holy Spirit of God seeks to have truth permeate your entire existence because truth is of God; Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This godly Truth isn’t simply a differentiation of facts versus error, but is also about right versus wrong, and good versus evil. For instance, the fact is that our church building is not shaped like a ball. Any assertion that we are gathered in a ball-shaped building is simply an error, but it doesn’t mean that the assertion is evil. Yet, if I were to throw a hissy fit and demand that you agree with me that it is shaped like a ball, and that you’re oppressing or mistreating me by saying that it’s not and is more rectangular and L-shaped, then I would actually be the one committing the evil and persecuting you for upholding the truth through my emotion-driven tirade. Even greater is the deep Truth of God; His commandments, His statutes, His creation, His order, His Word; all of these things of and from Him are true, right, good, and salutary to all who believe them.
So, since God has said that He has created us male and female, anyone who says that he or she can choose to be the opposite sex, or no sex at all, or a cat, or an alien, that person is committing an evil act by saying God is not true, and therefore He is not God. That is blasphemy and it is evil. To be passive about such atrocities among us is bad enough, much worse is to advocate or celebrate them. Also, since God has said that it is an abomination for a man to lie with a man as with a woman or vice versa, a woman with a woman as with a man, it is evil in God’s sight not only to do such things, but also to vote for and support people who actively normalize into the very laws of our cities, states, and country such perversion, acting on the philosophy that whatever people do in private is their business. No, it’s not. It’s all God’s business and He says it’s wickedness, therefore we, if we belong to Him, are to say the same thing. The same goes for a man and a woman shacking up, living together, and all the activities that come with it, without being married. That life and those pleasures are not to be shared by those two people without being joined together for life as husband and wife by God. To do so is do to something more than to be factually in error, but such living is something that is wicked, and we as Christians are not to ignore it, condone it, or excuse it as just oh, that’s just the way the world is today, as if that is justification enough to go against God. His truth deserves to be, it needs to be, it must be honored no matter how hard it gets for us to do so. For this truth, those who love wickedness will seek to persecute you when and where you agree with God.
Though you not be murdered, you still could end up being persecuted by longtime or new friends; by your employers; by your neighbors; by members of your family, either ones of distant relation or even those of very, very close relation to you. By the world’s social judgments you become the bigot, the homophobe, the transphobe, the rube, the domestic terrorist, the extremist, the fool all because you not only stand in the Truth as the Holy Spirit has enlightened you to by faith, but you also stand with the majority of most of the successful societies and cultures that have existed throughout time. That is no coincidence. Those who seek to live in accordance with God’s revealed will have always been the ones to have the greatest possibility of living prosperous, quiet, and peaceful lives. Look around at where restraint has been cast off and see what evil fruit those wicked trees have yielded. The “extremists” aren’t the ones who want to preserve modesty, wholesomeness, goodness, and beauty as God has given and ordered it. The “extremists” are the ones who take what was once too shameful to be done except hidden in the dark of night and now literally parade it down main street in full daylight in front of women and children, opposing all discretion with vile flamboyancy, saying that anyone who opposes their debased minds and ways are the ones who are depraved, not them. Behold your persecutors: the perverts, the fornicators, the adulterers, the sexually immoral, along with all those who advocate such things, vote for such things, or defend such things. Your persecutors are multiplying all around you simply because of the truth that the Holy Spirit has testified to you about Jesus. Your persecution doesn’t depend on whether you mentioned Jesus by Name or not. Simply stand for truth in the order of the world as He has given it and you will soon see who His and your persecutors are.
Beloved in the Lord, it matters not if you don’t want this persecution to come to you. Do not deny the reality in which you live. Instead say to yourself, “courage, dear heart.” Courage is what you need and courage is what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit give to you because what God says is true; what God does is good. Be of good courage and fear not the persecution, for it is necessary. To stand for what is good as one who yourself desires to be about the goodness of He Who has redeemed you out of all this sinful mess is the better place to be, even for a while as the world screeches at your so-called backwardness. These things Jesus has told you, that when the time comes, and keeps on coming, you may remember that He, your good God and Savior, has told you of them and has sent His Holy Spirit, the Helper, to you from the Father so that you may stand firm; so that you may endure persecution, even death, for you know the truth about life beyond the grave and you fear it not.
To remember Jesus and the truth into which He has delivered you is to recount Him constantly to yourself, even vocally out loud by voicing your prayers and the Psalms as you read them; to one another as you speak of the glory, goodness, and faithfulness of God, all that He has done, and all that He will still do; and to the world for they still have time for the Holy Spirit to bring faith to them by hearing and for them to be drawn to Christ out of the darkness of sin and death. Use your redeemed tongue to tell the truth, especially that of His Good News of salvation, not fearing the persecution that is sure to come, that’s but for a time, but praying and being hopeful for everlasting fruit that He seeks to bring forth from His Word being proclaimed by those who aren’t afraid to be truth-bearers. Christ is with you.
The world doesn’t need another one among billions who will simply shut up, who will sympathize with demands of tolerance and celebration, or who will just go along to get along. You weren’t called to be buddy-buddy with a world that hates you and the God Who created and redeemed you. Living to just not rock the boat is not truly living at all because cowering at unholy persecution only endangers you to be swept away in the sins and evil desires of your persecutors. Never return evil for evil, meaning do not persecute your persecutors, but don’t cower at standing firm in the greater Word, which is not from them, but from Christ, your Redeemer. Persecution happens to you because they have not known the Father nor the Son. But the Holy Spirit has testified to you of Christ, so that you now believe in His Name. And in a world gone mad, full of wicked persecutors, you can do no better than to be one who testifies in the midst of all persecution, both soft and hard.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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